Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The running community

It's been a long time since I posted. I am a different person now than I was when I blogged regularly, and I am almost unrecognizable from the person I was 3 years ago when I started this blog. Back then, my husband was deployed and I needed an outlet. Blogging fulfilled that, and I absolutely love the community I've found in it.

But then, my lifestyle changed and I spent WAY less time on the computer. When M left for Iraq, I was unhappy. It had only been a short time since the death of my Mom and I handled it horribly. I got depressed, my anxiety spiraled out of control and I developed agoraphobia. I didn't have a great support system then, as I don't have much family, so it was up to me to change something. And I did. And I'm very proud of that, and who I am now.

I started out walking with my dogs. I have a bunch of them, so that kept me busy. Then I started hiking every day. It proved to be the thing that keeps me sane. After 2 years of hiking, 60 lbs lost and a complete mental reboot, I began to run.

The first race I ever ran was The Color Run just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I ran it with some of my favorite people on this planet and I had a blast doing it. That's me #5249 and my best friend # 5250. (He has also lost an unreal amount of weight, 100 lbs!) we trained together, we ran together, and we celebrated life together afterward.

This is us 2 months later, right after we finished the Warrior Dash. We trained for it for months, and it was a bit of a science experiment to see how awesome we could become!

These are my favorites. 2 friends, (me) and my wonderful husband.

All of us have been through so much hardship, so many losses, and so much sadness. But we do what we can, no matter what it takes to look on the bright side of things, and that has changed my life too. After 2 years of running, it's a huge part of who I am and in a way, it defines me. To be a good runner, you have to commit, you have to be dedicated and it becomes a lifestyle. The point of my "comeback post" is to show how running and the community involved in it is such a miraculously positive thing.

You can easily scroll back through my archives and see how I looked before. I was miserable and had no confidence and nothing to contribute to the world. I was in a fog and couldn't have been any more lost.

Running saved me. When I heard the news of the attack at the Boston Marathon yesterday, it broke my heart. This is MY community. This is my sport. Running Boston is a dream, and you have to be elite to even qualify. People dedicate their lives to training for it for years. When I heard of the shrapnel and how it was low to the ground... some of those runners, who define themselves as runners, will never run again. And that to me is as large a loss as I can imagine.

Every race that I have ever seen has an entry fee, of which, a sizable chunk goes to charity. That's one of the reasons I run, to give back in a real, and healthy way. My heart is broken for Boston and our running community. But as I have learned to do, I remain optimistic. The bad in the world will never defeat the good.

1 comment:

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